The fine silt of a crumbled, eroded mountain
and the ashen, kaolin remains of my mother
drift in the river the way a lace, sheer curtain
whispers in the open window of a funeral chamber.
A mother is the mountain in a young man’s world.
Yet, our boyish selves mature to love the great plains
our mountain becomes; we mourn her water tolled
transformation knowing that the sanded, selfless pains
of the risen earth, now worn away, is the soil of our life.
She was my Everest, a heaven bound, snowy peak
who raised me above the world, free from strife,
and then planted me with sunny love and kisses on the cheek.
The river holds her nurturing remains and ever as I grow
it’s the young mountain I very much want to know.